I haven’t done these posts in a while, and I’m a little late for the July one, but I still wanted to share the audiobooks I got sent by Libro.fm this month, because I’m very excited about them!
As you may know, I’m a part of Libro.fm‘s influencer program, which means I get to choose from a selection of audiobooks to post about and review every month! Libro.fm is an audiobook service that makes it possible for readers to buy audiobooks and support physical bookstores (you could even choose which store to support if you wanted to), and their service is available worldwide (although their membership is limited to the US).
This month, I chose 5 audiobooks, because the selection was just too good to limit my choices.
Brandy Colbert – The Voting Booth
Marva Sheridan was born ready for this day. She’s always been driven to make a difference in the world, and what better way than to vote in her first election?Duke Crenshaw is so done with this election. He just wants to get voting over with so he can prepare for his band’s first paying gig tonight.Only problem? Duke can’t vote.When Marva sees Duke turned away from their polling place, she takes it upon herself to make sure his vote is counted. She hasn’t spent months doorbelling and registering voters just to see someone denied their right.And that’s how their whirlwind day begins, rushing from precinct to precinct, cutting school, waiting in endless lines, turned away time and again, trying to do one simple thing: vote. They may have started out as strangers, but as Duke and Marva team up to beat a rigged system (and find Marva’s missing cat), it’s clear that there’s more to their connection than a shared mission for democracy.
I was already lucky enough to read an eARC of The Voting Booth, and it’s such a good read. Definitely a must in this US election year!
Alexis Hall – Boyfriend Material
Luc O’Donnell is tangentially — and reluctantly — famous. His rock-star parents split when he was young, and the father he’s never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad’s making a comeback, Luc’s back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything.To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice normal relationship…and Oliver Blackwood is as nice and normal as they come. He’s a barrister, an ethical vegetarian, and someone who has never inspired a moment of scandal in his life. In other words, he’s perfect boyfriend material. Unfortunately, apart from being gay, single, and really really in need of a date for a big event, Luc and Oliver have nothing in common. So they strike a deal to be publicity-friendly (fake) boyfriends until the dust settles. Then they can go their separate ways and pretend it never happened.But the thing about fake-dating is that it can feel a lot like real-dating. And that’s when you get used to someone…start falling for them…don’t ever want to let them go.
I’ve actually already listened to this, and it’s hilarious, and the narrator is SO GOOD. My review will be up soon, but in the mean time I can only highly recommend that you listen to this book!
Emma Donoghue – The Pull of the Stars
In Dublin, 1918, a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu is a small world of work, risk, death, and unlooked-for love, in “Donoghue’s best novel since Room” (Kirkus Reviews)
In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia’s regimented world step two outsiders — Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police , and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.
In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other’s lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.
In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.
I don’t know a lot about this, but I’ve loved some of Emma Donoghue’s books in the past, and this is sapphic? So?? Sign me up!! It is about a pandemic though, so I might hold off on reading it for a while.
Morgan Jerkins – Wandering in Strange Lands
One of Buzzfeed’s 24 New Books We Couldn’t Put Down
“One of the smartest young writers of her generation.”—Book Riot
From the acclaimed cultural critic and New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing—a writer whom Roxane Gay has hailed as “a force to be reckoned with”—comes this powerful story of her journey to understand her northern and southern roots, the Great Migration, and the displacement of black people across America.
Between 1916 and 1970, six million black Americans left their rural homes in the South for jobs in cities in the North, West, and Midwest in a movement known as The Great Migration. But while this event transformed the complexion of America and provided black people with new economic opportunities, it also disconnected them from their roots, their land, and their sense of identity, argues Morgan Jerkins. In this fascinating and deeply personal exploration, she recreates her ancestors’ journeys across America, following the migratory routes they took from Georgia and South Carolina to Louisiana, Oklahoma, and California.
Following in their footsteps, Jerkins seeks to understand not only her own past, but the lineage of an entire group of people who have been displaced, disenfranchised, and disrespected throughout our history. Through interviews and hundreds of pages of transcription, Jerkins braids the loose threads of her family’s oral histories, which she was able to trace back 300 years, with the insights and recollections of black people she met along the way—the tissue of black myths, customs, and blood that connect the bones of American history.
Incisive and illuminating, Wandering in Strange Lands is a timely and enthralling look at America’s past and present, one family’s legacy, and a young black woman’s life, filtered through her sharp and curious eyes.
In light of continually wanting to educate myself, I picked this audiobook as well. I haven’t read about The Great Migration before, so I’m very interested in learning about it.
Stephen Graham Jones – The Only Good Indians
“One of 2020’s buzziest horror novels.” —Entertainment Weekly
“More than I could have asked for in a novel.”—Tommy Orange, Pulitzer Prize finalist author of There There
“What Stephen Graham Jones does for me, is create new possibilities for Indigenous storymakers.” —Terese Marie Mailhot, New York Times bestselling author
“A masterpiece. ” —Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World
Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.
I’m not the biggest horror reader, but I’ve heard such good things about this book that I really want to give it a try. I also need to make more of an effort to read books by Indigenous authors.
What audiobooks are you planning to listen to or have you listened to this month?
The links in this post lead to Libro.fm’s website. The general link is a referral link, but the links to the specific books aren’t.
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